


Middle Names

by RosieTarnation



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:14:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27802879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosieTarnation/pseuds/RosieTarnation
Summary: “What’s your middle name?” the gardener asked.The cook scoffed jokingly.  “Almost twenty-five years as friends and you don’t know my middle name.”“It never really came up before, did it?” she asked.  “Come on then, what is it?”“Owen.”“Owen?” she frowned a bit.  “You don’t look like an Owen.”“And you don’t look like a Jamie, yet, here we are.”Inspired by the fact that since the storyteller used fake names, we don't know any of the characters' actual names.  So, at some point, she decided what fake names to use.Or, the gardener and the cook at Flora's wedding talk about middle names.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie mention, Hannah Grose/Owen Sharma mention, Jamie & Owen Sharma
Kudos: 58





	Middle Names

The gardener found the cook after the rehearsal dinner, when the party had moved inside for drinks by the fire.

“That was a lovely speech,” she said, sidling up next to him at the bar like no time had passed. And in some ways, it felt like it hadn’t – she knew there would always be a place at his side for her, like there was always a place at her side for him.

But sometimes it felt like ages had passed. It sometimes felt like their meeting, their working together, their parting was all lifetimes ago.

“Why thank you, it was entirely improvised,” the cook said proudly. He quickly ordered drinks for them, remembering his friend liked white wine and knowing which ones were best.

“Yeah, sure, I saw you rereading your note cards when the salad was being served.”

“It wasn’t a great salad, to be fair,” he said, with a bit of a shrug.

“What’s your middle name?” the gardener asked.

The cook scoffed jokingly. “Almost twenty-five years as friends and you don’t know my middle name.”

“It never really came up before, did it?” she asked. “Come on then, what is it?”

“Owen.”

“Owen?” she frowned a bit. “You don’t look like an Owen.”

“And you don’t look like a Jamie, yet, here we are.”

“How do you know my middle name?”

“I listen,” he said, taking the drinks from the bartender. The gardener put some cash in the tip jar and they stepped away, continuing to chat while they explored the party space.

“I never told you my middle name.”

The cook shrugged. “You told her one day, in the kitchen, back at Bly. You were sitting having tea, because it had just started pouring one day while you were out in the garden and she insisted I make you some tea to warm you up.” He smiled a bit at the memory.

The gardener frowned. She knew exactly who the cook was talking about – she thought of her often, too. She was frowning, though, because she didn’t remember this.

“I don’t remember,” she admitted.

“What, you don’t remember one specific instance of having tea with her, even though you must’ve had tea with her about a thousand times?” the cook asked, giving her a bit of a nudge. “That was one of the most beautiful things about her, I think. She could make you feel so comfortable, so safe and welcome, that you’d tell her just about anything and it wouldn’t feel like a big deal.”

The gardener was smiling now, too. She certainly remembered the housekeeper having that effect.

“Anyway, I was doing dishes and you two were talking and it just came up,” he said. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, I just…” he trailed off.

The gardener nodded. “Yeah, she had a way of making you feel like the only person in the room,” she agreed. She might not have remembered this conversation in particular, but she remembered countless others in which she said things she didn’t tell anyone else. And it wasn’t the big things – it was usually little details that no one else asked, that no one else would care about. The housekeeper had known the gardener’s favorite color, her middle name, the name of the cat she got the first morning she woke up in her very own flat and wasn’t yet used to solitude. She laughed, still. “God, what else have you overhead?”

“You named your teddy bear Ethel.”

“Oi!” she said, giving him a good elbow to his side. “Christ, I haven’t thought of Ethel in years. I do remember telling her that, though. The kids just got teddy bears from their uncle and they couldn’t pick names. I thought I swore her to secrecy, though…”

“You did,” the cook said. “I was in the pantry, you didn’t notice.”

The gardener scoffed. “That place was full of ghosts but somehow you did the most sneaking around.”

“Why do you need to know my middle name?”

They’d made it across the room. This was standard operating procedure for weddings for the gardener – she stayed near the wall, near the windows, out of the way but visible enough that whoever invited her knew she came and had a nice time and appreciated the invite. She chatted in a friendly enough way with cousins and college friends and aunts and uncles, she always said a kind goodbye when she left just after the first wave of departures. She had her system to make them bearable.

But that day, that wedding and rehearsal dinner, she thought she needed to change it up. She needed to say more, do more, be more than just the kind florist or the nice friend of the bride’s uncle or whatever that gave a nice gift and made polite conversation. 

“These kids should know what happened,” the gardener said. She spoke quickly before her old friend could object, but also noticed that maybe he wasn’t going to. “I’m not going to say it outright, I’m going to change things so they don’t know it’s them, that it’s us. It’s good that they have their childhoods, that they don’t have these memories that haunt the rest of us. But she died for them. And I promised her she wouldn’t be forgotten.”

“She’s not forgotten.”

“I will never tell those kids what they went through,” the gardener promised. “I swear. I don’t want to cause them any more pain than they've already had. But they can know what she did without knowing they did it for her, right? There is a way for people to know what she did without knowing it happened to these kids, to this family. To us.”

The cook inhaled deeply. “Maybe change the stuff about the bride’s uncle being her father, she doesn’t need an identity crisis on her wedding eve.”

"Will do," the gardener laughed. “It’s your story, too. Are you okay if I tell it?”

“I have a feeling you tell it beautifully,” the cook said, meaning it. He took a sip of his drink. “So, what, you’re going to use our middle names?”

“There’s so many people in this story, mate, if I had to invent entirely new names I’d lose track.”

The cook laughed. 

“And they deserve to be remembered, all of them,” the gardener continued, thinking of them all - her bosses, then the first au pair, then the housekeeper, then the second au pair who was so many other things to her. She'd even tell of that fucking driver - her friend deserved to have her story told, even if it had to include the man who killed her. “If we can’t use their real names, their first names, this is as close as we get and I reckon that’ll be good enough. We’ll remember _them_ and what they did and what it cost so we can all be here, doing this.”

“What better time to tell a ghost story than at a wedding, hey?”

The gardener sipped her drink in agreement.

“Her middle name was Hannah,” the cook said.

The gardener looked over at him. She raised her glass. “Danielle. Dani.”

The cook touched his glass to hers, remembering their loves that they lost.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why but something about Jamie making up everyone's names stuck with me. Also I love all the friendships in this show so this was a fun way to write Jamie & Owen and little bits of Jamie & Hannah.
> 
> As always, fuck trump, fuck white supremacy, fuck fascism, wear a mask!


End file.
